No matter how many pheasant drives you see, either from the perspective of gun, beater or keeper, something is always missing without woodcock.

Invited to a small day’s shooting last weekend, I was delighted to have shot half a dozen pheasants by lunch time.

Guns and beaters switched between every drive, and my morning had alternated between phases of standing out in the windswept open and thrashing a path through sodden banks of bracken.

With a bag in the mid 30s, the shoot captain decided to shake things up a little for the afternoon, and everyone but he and two spaniels moved off to circle a long, narrow strip of pine trees on the far side of the shoot.

Some of the younger guns, myself included, wondered why on earth we were bothering with such an unassuming little collection of trees.

We would soon find out.

The strip was less than thirty feet wide, but it followed a deep ditch of brambles and moss that looked like it would have been impenetrable to a chieftain tank.

As the guns settled down at wide intervals, the shoot captain stepped into the strip and held the top strand of barbed wire down for the soaking dogs.

Within seconds, they had all vanished into the undergrowth.

A cock pheasant emerged with a rumbling clatter to fly straight on, high and strong.

Despite several bangs, he locked his wings and vanished into the distance.

All of a sudden, there was a tremendous flurry of excitement.

A woodcock had emerged, and it flitted silently along the line of firing guns, forty feet high but as unassailable as a fighter plane.

Over the next 10 minutes, a mixture of more than a dozen pheasants and half a dozen woodcock poured out of the wood, and the guns started to get their eyes in.

We are often told that variety is the spice of life, but we shouldn’t underestimate how important it is in a shooting context.

Not knowing what to expect next turned what could have been an underwhelming drive into the highlight of the day, and it was all thanks to the woodcock.

The views expressed on Patrick Laurie's blog are the author's and not the views of Shooting Gazette, ShootingUK, IPC Media or its employees. www.gallowayfarm.wordpress.com

Although I have had the shotgun out and about quite frequently over the last few weeks, remembering to take everything for the opening shoot always seems to involve a tremendous amount of rummaging around in search of cartridges, gunslips and that most important piece of kit, the hip flask.

I pulled away from my house on a frosty morning last Saturday in a car loaded with unnecessary and novel pieces of kit that had been picked up over the summer when the memory of what you actually need on a cold December day becomes distorted.

I checked the time and put the pedal to the metal.

My first invitation of the season was from an old family friend who insists that punctuality is the most important quality in the universe, and several of his guests often find themselves missing the first drive thanks to a three or four second delay in their arrival.

When he says that the day starts at 10am, that is when he expects the first shot to be fired.

It wasn’t far to go, and I pulled into a yard of labradors and beaters with only a few seconds to spare.

I met my host and happily chatted to some of the other guns for the few short moments allowed to us before the day began.

For the first drive, I put on the possum skin shooting gloves that I bought at the CLA and adjusted the gaudy garters from the game fair at Scone.

Both had seemed quite sensible in July, but now they looked decidedly silly in a field of dead thistles.

Pulling my shotgun from its sleeve, I found that, although I had remembered all the accessories, I had overlooked one thing.

I’d left the forestock at home. The gun couldn’t be fired, and for the half hour duration of the first drive, while pheasants came spiralling out overhead, I hung my head in shame.

The views expressed on Patrick Laurie's blog are the author's and not the views of Shooting Gazette, ShootingUK, IPC Media or its employees. www.gallowayfarm.wordpress.com

Ever since I started ferreting, I have been wondering what else my ferrets would be able to bolt besides rabbits.

I’ve read stories of little owls, rats and fox cubs coming charging out from the safety of a rabbit hole when they feel threatened, but always took most of these tales with a pinch of salt.

Of course, it makes sense that other animals would use rabbit warrens, and an old warren must be made up of many feet of tunnel that are no longer being used by the original architects.

Fox cubs are distributed across rabbit warrens during the summer, but since ferreting is essentially a winter sport, it is hard to imagine a ferret coming across an adult fox which has squeezed its way into a warren and not left any indication that it was in there, either through a larger spoil heap or the distinctive smell.

On the whole, I was hoping that my ferrets might add some variety to my excursions by bolting unexpected animals from rabbit warrens, but I didn’t exactly expect it to happen as a matter of routine.

While ferreting in the last half hour of light last Saturday, some friends and I erected the new long-net around a large warren at the base of an old blackthorn tree.

The ferret went in, but the wind was picking up and it was almost impossible to hear if he was working effectively.

Suddenly, a tiny weasel burst from a hole directly opposite me and tumbled like a dead leaf under the long-net and away into a nettle patch.

So there it is – after six weeks of working ferrets, I am now convinced that carnivores share warrens with rabbits, although given how small this weasel was, I would imagine that it would probably struggle to do much harm to its landlords.

The views expressed on Patrick Laurie's blog are the author's and not the views of Shooting Gazette, ShootingUK, IPC Media or its employees. www.gallowayfarm.wordpress.com